Fatherhood: Impressions from Year One

Upon word of our impending addition to the family, many an experienced parent set about assuring me of the joys of fatherhood. I was grateful for all the well-wishing and good-natured advice, but nothing could have prepared me for the way it actually would feel to welcome my son into the world. Here was this little person that I knew I would always love, no matter what situations may arise. I knew this immediately.

I also knew that my perspective had been forever shifted. Within my orbit, there was now a true dependent–not in the sense that a family member may be listed as a dependent on a tax form, but in the literal sense. Someone was trusting in me for their security, for mobility, for shelter, for nourishment. In no way do I intend to downplay my wife’s role in providing these things alongside me–she is the consummate mother, as far as I can tell–but to communicate that this type of necessary provision was a new expectation for me. On paper, to someone outside the situation, this advanced level of responsibility may be lacking in appeal, but a year of practice has taught me there is a deep satisfaction to be found in the act of providing so much for someone who is capable of so little, and the satisfaction is all the deeper when that someone is your own.

In the initial days of Arthur’s life, there was a barely perceptible quiver at the end of each long cry, a tremulous shudder of sound that would have been easy to miss had I not been in a state of hyper awareness, as I imagine new fathers often are. His newborn lungs were giving it all the volume they could muster. It is a mystery as to why this became a point of pride for me, but it did. There was an identification with this desperate, infantile wail–a heart connection–that apparently was based in nothing more than the fact that he was mine.

Several of his actions would create mysterious heart connections that year: the spirited shouts of made-up words when he discovered his voice (many of which sounded to me like various forms of “daddy”); the ecstatic smiles he would give from his crib first thing in the morning; the upright angle of his back after he learned to sit on his own; the way his brow would furrow at the serious business of eating a cookie; even the downturned corners of his mouth, sunken deep into his chubby cheeks, as a pout was about to materialize into a full-blown tantrum (so traumatic to him, yet so endearing to me).

At this early stage, it is difficult to resist imagining what Arthur will look like or what he will find interesting when he is older, but I am careful not to let those musings overshadow what a miracle he is right now, at one year of age. His face brightens when I come home, and sometimes he squeals. To think that this little boy will soon be calling me Dad, and to think he may even want to be like me one day, fills me with a joy I can hardly contain. And in case he happens to stumble across this post at a point in the unknowable future, I just want to say, “Arthur, you have made me proud just by being born, and I love you.”